In the 20 years after its introduction, the principal-agent model has seen increasing use to study political processes in virtually all policy domains in which the EU is active. Relaxing the strict assumptions that guided the original economic applications has greatly widened the scope for potential applications. This very phenomenon has also created an existential challenge to the model’s contemporary use, which is combining the reductionist aims of the model (from which it derives its strength) with the complex empirical settings to which it is increasingly applied. To facilitate this balancing exercise, we propose a two-step approach to principal-agent analysis, in which the mapping of the principal-agent proof relation is separated from the effective analysis that examines the reasons, modalities and consequences of delegation and control in the EU. In doing so, we show how the principal-agent model can continue to provide new insights at the various stages of the research process.

As a result of by-elections in two districts (5 November, 1995) the No. 2 SLD retained one and lost one seat in the Senat (the present total 38 seats), and the No. 40 UW won one additional seat (the present total 6 seats). For the composition of the Senat see the 1995 Yearbook.

This article investigates the syntactic properties of deponents in finite and nonfinite contexts in several Indo-European languages (Vedic Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Hittite, Modern Greek) and proposes a novel definition of deponency: deponents are morphologically nonactive verbs with noncanonical agent arguments that are merged below VoiceP. Since VoiceP is spelled out with nonactive morphology in those languages if it does not introduce an external argument itself, the result is a surface mismatch between morphological form and syntactic function. This proposal predicts that only certain nonfinite forms of deponents will surface with the syntax/morphology mismatch, namely, those that include VoiceP. Nominalizations without VoiceP will appear to suspend the voice mismatch. These predictions are shown to be correct with respect to the behavior of deponent participles in the languages under study.

An extensive body of research documents how governing parties generally suffer electoral defeats. Varying explanations have been offered, most of which touch upon the liabilities of policy responsibility. Although media coverage is generally acknowledged as one of these liabilities, few empirical studies have examined how news content affect government support. Based on the fact that voters get their information about politics, policies and societal issues from the media, this article studies how the constant stream of negative news influences incumbent support over a 20‐year period in Denmark. Modeling a previously untested argument on the cost of ruling, it shows that the accumulation of bad news throughout tenure exerts a substantial effect on government support.

There is now a rich pedagogical literature that attests to the absolute centrality of assessment and feedback in effective student learning at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. And yet – despite this consensus in the pedagogical literature over the crucial importance of assessment and feedback – they are not, it seems, fulfilling their purpose or potential for students or lecturers alike. This symposium starts from the premise that assessment and feedback matter, that they are not working at present and that we need to find ways to do them differently. The symposium brings together five original articles from contributors who all want to explore alternative ways of thinking about, and doing, assessment and/or feedback so that they work better both for our students and for us as their lecturers.

What factors explain the wave of adoption of the flat tax in Eastern Europe? It is argued in this article that, once the first few successes were underway, governments with liberal outlooks toward taxation adopted the reform through a process of rational learning: an often radically new government will tend to adopt the policy based on successful implementation of its neighbours. The issue of policy diffusion is approached by explicitly modeling the different mechanisms that might underlie the process. Little evidence is found for pure ‘bandwagoning’ in the adoption of the flat tax – the presence of other market‐minded reforms do not predict adoption of the flat tax, and contagion measures do not capture the dynamics of the adoption of the reform. Instead, rational learning, where economically right‐wing governments evaluated the success of the reform (as measured by their ability to attract foreign investment) in the medium term, plays the largest role. Rational emulation in a shorter time period contributes to the probability of adoption as well, as does a change to an economically liberal ideology.

Hungary and Poland are often placed in the same analytical framework from the period of their ‘negotiated revolutions’ to their autocratic turn. This article aims to look behind this apparent similarity focusing on opposition behaviour. The analysis demonstrates that the executive–parliament power structure, the vigour of the extra-parliamentary actors, and the opposition party frame have the strongest influence on opposition behaviour, and they provide the sources of difference between the two country cases: in Hungary an enforced power game and in Poland a political game constrain opposition opportunities and opposition strategic behaviour.

Migrant community-based organizations (MCBOs) are key mediating structures between immigrants and host societies. However, when implementing this role in host societies, MCBOs often face a number of challenges that reduce their chances to be effective in promoting social justice. This paper aims to analyze the challenges that MCBOs settled in Milan (Northern Italy) experience and the coping strategies that they use in order to provide some guidelines on how to support them. In-depth interviews, observations and document analysis with 15 MCBOs were conducted. Based on a situational analysis, we present the main challenges perceived by MCBOs at three levels: internal (i.e., surviving), inter-organizational (i.e., collaborating) and community (i.e., being recognized as mediating actors). We provide specific guidelines for action on how to address such challenges and thus foster the role of MCBOs as mediating structures in receiving societies.

Scholarship has categorized referendums predominantly along their procedural and institutional features. This paper moves beyond these formal dimensions, argues that the policy subjected to a popular vote is the missing link and proposes a complementary typology based on the policy areas. This typology fosters comparisons across countries, political systems and over time within one policy area, thus serving as a powerful analytical tool for further analyses. At the same time, the typology maps out the history of referendum use showing the chronology of salient issues in different societies. The empirical evidence draws on an original dataset of 630 nationwide referendums in Europe between 1793 and 2019.

Recent years have witnessed an increasing use of econometric analysis in arms race studies. The present article reviews this past and the potential future contribution of econometrics to arms race research and concludes that so far the main impact of the new approach has been on efforts at parameter estimation. Therefore, a number of problems typically arising in the application of econometric techniques to the estimation of arms race models from empirical time series data are discussed, and the need for a thorough investigation of the small-sample properties of the results of common procedures is demonstrated. Finally, the considerable potential of econometrics for refining current arms race models is illustrated in the context of asymmetric response and distributed lag hypotheses.

The article examines approaches to the study of the party-policy link and argues that two generally held assumptions - the unidimensionality of party political conflict and the party as unitary actor - should be treated as matters for empirical dedermination rather than a priori assumption. Having briefly reviewed interpretations of dimensionality in the Irish party system, the article puts forward an empirical approach to both issues based on multidimensional scaling of preference data from a sample of parliamentarians. The results of the application of such an approach in the Irish case indicate at least a two dimensional policy space and considerable intra-party factionalism. This evidence is then used to interpret the party-policy link in three areas: capital taxation, abortion and divorce, and Northern Ireland policy.

Prior research on investigating the religion–volunteering relationship has tended to commonly treat religious involvement as single-item measures, e.g., frequency of church attendance, and has defined volunteering as a simple dummy variable (1 = volunteers, 0 = otherwise). The present study attempted to look at the above relationship by measuring religious involvement as a multifaceted and multi-item measure and volunteering as engaging in different types of voluntary activity, and specific domains and overall aggregate of volunteering. The results based on a statewide representative sample from the Survey of Texas Adults 2004 showed that religious involvement was generally and significantly related to higher volunteering across voluntary types, domains, and aggregate count of volunteering, but varied in magnitude contingent on the types and domains being examined. In addition, the religious effects were held even adjusting for a variety of pertinent socio-demographic and denominational characteristics, in which these background characteristics are more dynamic in relation to volunteering than we knew. Implications of the findings related to social services and policy making are discussed.

Does the European Union (EU) represent a new political order replacing the old nation‐states? The assessment of the real character of political orders requires the identification of political key actors and of the specific structure of their interactions. Transgovernmental networks have been considered to be one of the most important features of EU integration. Unfortunately, the network structures, processes and the impact of these informal horizontal inter‐organisational relations between nation‐states are mostly unknown. The main objective of this article is to measure and explain the selective pattern of informal bilateral relations of high officials of the EU Member States’ ministerial bureaucracies on the occasion of an EU Intergovernmental Conference. The quantitative data used rely on standardised interviews with 140 top‐level bureaucrats. The statistical estimation of network choices is based on recent developments of exponential random graph models.

In Landau 2015, it is proposed that the acceptability of implicit control (i.e. control by the implicit external argument of a passivized verb into complement clauses) is not only restricted by the revised Visser's generalization (van Urk 2013), but also depends on the type of matrix predicate involved. While attitude matrix predicates allow implicit control (IMPLICIT LOGOPHORIC CONTROL), nonattitude matrix predicates do not. Landau takes this bifurcation to support his TWOTIERED THEORY OF CONTROL by assuming that in the case of nonattitude matrix predicates, the control relation is essentially a predication relation, from which implicit arguments are independently excluded. In this article, we subject these claims to empirical scrutiny, showing that Landau's generalization on implicit control holds only in a subset of languages, while other languages license implicit control with both types of matrix predicates. We investigate and reject the hypothesis that this crosslinguistic split is the consequence of different types of implicit arguments, only some of which are syntactically represented in a way that allows them to enter a predication relation. Based on an investigation of the acceptability of agent-modifying depictives in passives, we conclude that, in principle, implicit external arguments of passives in all languages under consideration can enter predication. We show, however, that there is a different correlation: languages that allow implicit control with nonattitude verbs (IMPLICIT PREDICATIVE CONTROL) are exactly those languages that allow impersonal passives of unergative predicates. To account for this correlation, we argue that implicit logophoric control, but not implicit predicative control, can be construed as a personal passive.

As charitable donations account for a significant amount of the revenue of professional associations, such associations can benefit greatly from a better understanding of the factors that influence the amount of money that members donate. Using data collected from six professional associations, this study examines the factors affecting association members’ donation amounts. A survey of 2156 members was conducted to investigate the potential factors. The results of hierarchical regression analysis showed that after controlling for sociodemographic factors, face-to-face solicitation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, membership length, and recommendation intention significantly influence the donation amount among members. This study offers more comprehensive explanations for the factors that influence members’ donation amounts and provides potential strategies to maximize donations from members.

During crises such as the present coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, nonprofits play a key role in ensuring support to improve the most vulnerable individuals’ health, social, and economic conditions. One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, an extensive automated literature analysis was conducted of 154 academic articles on nonprofit management during the pandemic—all of which were published in 2020. This study sought to identify and systematize academics’ contributions to knowledge about the crisis’s impact on the nonprofit sector and to ascertain the most urgent directions for future research. The results provide policymakers, nonprofit practitioners, and scholars an overview of the themes addressed and highlight the important assistance academic researchers provide to nonprofits dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.